Charles de Lint - Forests of the Heart

Ellie nodded, remembering how the liquor had made her eyes tear last night.

“Where did you have it?” Donal asked.

The coffee was ready, so over steaming mugs and croissants, Ellie gave him a rundown of the previous night’s events, finishing up with the woman she’d met while Tommy had been talking to the police.

“I would have thought she was a man, if it hadn’t been for Tommy,” she said.

“It’s like one of those old ballads,” Donal said. “You know, where your man finds out his cabin boy’s really a woman. I wonder what she’s hiding from?”

“Who knows? In this city, I’m not sure I even want to know.”

Donal shook her head. “Jaysus, where’s your sense of mystery? Maybe she’s a deposed, foreign princess and all she has left of her former life is that silver flask. She’d be carrying herself with a tragic air, am I right?”

“Hardly.”

“Fair enough. So she’s learned to hide it well. To live with her disappointments. To put the past aside and get on with her life.”

Ellie sighed. “You know, the way you and Jilly can carry on you’d think every street person is some charming eccentric, or basically a sweet and kind person who’s only had a bit of bad luck. But it doesn’t work that way. They need our sympathy, sure, and we should try to help them all we can, but some of them are mean-spirited and some of them are dangerous and some of them would be screwed up no matter where you found them. I don’t think it helps anything to pretend differently.”

“Yes, but—”

“I work with them almost every day and they’re just people, Donal. More messed up than some of us, and certainly more unlucky. And if some of them choose to live the way they do, it’s not because they have some romantic story hidden in their past. It’s because they’re kids whose home lives were so awful they prefer to live in the different kind of hell that’s the streets. Or they’re schizophrenics who can’t get, or won’t take, their medicine. They’re alcoholics, or junkies, or on the run, or all of the above and then some. And the world they live in isn’t safe. It’s more dangerous than anything we can imagine. We go into it, but we can step back out whenever we want. They can’t.”

“I know,” Donal said, his voice subdued.

Ellie sighed again, remembering that he’d suffered his own hard times, he and his sister Miki both, though they rarely spoke of those days. They hadn’t gone through one of Angel’s programs, but they’d still had to endure hunger and homelessness before they found a way out of the darkness.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to come off all high and mighty. It’s just… it breaks my heart sometimes because there’s so many of them and some of them are so young and we can’t even come close to reaching them.”

Donal reached across the table and gave Ellie’s hand a squeeze.

“I know that, too,” he said. “But I’m with Jilly on this one. We just like to see the magic in things, instead of focusing too much on the hurt of it all.”

“When you’re not pretending to be overcome by the doldrums.”

“Pretending?”

“Pretending,” Ellie said firmly. “And please. Magic?”

“Oh, not hocus-pocus, exactly. But you know, there’s magic everywhere you turn, if you pay attention to it. Little miracles like your being in the right place at the right time to give that man CPR and save his life. Or the way some old rubbie can turn out to be the most gifted storyteller. You can sit there with him on a bundle of newspapers in some alley, but when he starts to tell a story, it takes you a million miles away. And some of the street people really are unusual and mysterious—I mean, what better place to hide than in plain sight, on the streets with all the rest of the invisible people?”

This was about the one subject on which Donal could enthuse for hours. Even talking about his art rarely did away with the long face and the Eeyore voice.

“You’re beginning to sound like one of Tommy’s aunts,” she told him. “The mysterious and numerous Creek sisters.”

Donal smiled. “Grand women, all.”

“You’ve met them?”

“Sure,” Donal said. “You haven’t?”

“To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure they really existed.”

“Well, I haven’t met them all,” Donal told her. “I mean, Tommy’s mother has… what? Sixteen sisters? But they certainly exist. Let’s see. I met Sunday one time on the rez when I went up to a powwow with Tommy and Jilly. And then Conception and Serendipity always come to the bake sale at St. Vincent’s every spring. And Zulema’s been doing work with Native kids through Angel for years.” He paused and cocked his head. “What made you think they didn’t exist?”

“I don’t know,” Ellie said, feeling a little embarrassed now. “Their names. The way Tommy talks about them like they’re mythological figures.”

“Up on the rez, everybody sees them that way. They call them the Aunts and they go to them for medicines and stories and that sort of thing. Bloody miracle workers, they are.” He gave Ellie one of his rare grins. “And now that I think of it, Conception told me about a cure for sore muscles. I remember writing it down, but…” He pursed his lips, brow furrowing, then shook his head. “I can’t remember where I put it. But if you asked Tommy, he could get it from her.”

“Oh right. That’d be just what I need. He already passes along their little folk wisdoms at the drop of a hat.”

Donal gave her a considering look. “Which, I’m guessing, is still the sort of thing that makes you uncomfortable.”

“I’m as uncomfortable with it as you or Jilly are comfortable.”

Donal shook his head. “Now that’s extreme.”

“But true.”

On both sides, Ellie thought. She liked whimsy and magical things as much as the next person, but she kept it in perspective. One could read about it, or use it in one’s art without believing it was real. Donal was bad enough with his teasing tales of the little people and all, but when it came to Jilly, well, sometimes it seemed that Jilly lived in an entirely different world than the one that Ellie and the rest of the world did—a world where the headlines from supermarket tabloids were tangible possibilities rather than outright fiction. It came out in her paintings, which depicted fairyland creatures wandering through urban cityscapes, as well as in her conversation. The latter required only the smallest opening and Jilly would be away with wild theories, supposed true-life anecdotes and the like.

There were times when Ellie found this sort of thing maddening, but it was also part of Jilly’s charm, this fey streak she had and the ability to be so persuasive that, if it was late enough at night and you’d had enough glasses of wine, you could almost go along with her beliefs. You could almost accept that the world held not only what we all know it to hold, but also the fantastical tangents that people like Donal and Jilly almost seemed to draw into it, by their own absolute conviction, if nothing else.

“Okay,” Ellie said. “Since you like mysteries, what do you make of this?”

She went over to where her parka was hanging and fetched the business card she’d found on the dash of the van last night. Donal took it from her, his eyes filled with curiosity until he’d read the few words on it. Then he placed it on the table and gave Ellie a puzzled look.

“It’s a business card,” he said.

“Duh, I know that. But what does it mean?”

Donal glanced down at the card, then back at her, obviously confused. “Could you explain the question again?”

“Is that a person’s name, or the name of a business?” Ellie said. “And why isn’t there a phone number?”